Dead State footage shows off early combat

Zombie survival RPG Dead State has been pretty quiet since smashing its Kickstarter target last year, but developer Doublebear has released some work-in-progress combat footage.

Doublebear released the footage via a Kickstarter update. ” It shouldnâ€™t be seen as a preview of a final game, but as a milestone that shows a lot of our basic systems coming online as a playable whole,” the post noted.

“Everything youâ€™re seeing is real-time, no editing tricks, no pre-scripted behavior. AI reacts to noise and zombies will spawn to the map if you make too much noise. They spawn at the blue exit zones. All our map pieces are built in a modular fashion.

“One of the difficulties of filming was that because our game is so reactive to what you do, it took us quite a few runs to get everything to play to the demonstration. You can see the difference with the noise in the last segment. Had we gone in with no prior knowledge of the area, the player and Vic could have a much harder time with the map.”

The are shown here is Llano, a forgiving early environment, and because both characters were over-levelled, were equipped with low-level items and wore no armour to compensate. Doublebear said that looting is very important in the finished game, as killing enemies doesn’t progress your character – only finding resources and meeting objectives does. Similarly, ammo is very scarce; using guns is a quick way to clear zombies but will attract new ones, even from outside the map.

The unfinished build has unoptimised pathfinding, and if you see characters doing nothing on their turn, they’re reloading; there’s no placeholder animation yet. Zombie noises are not final, and allies are still being fine-tuned. In the final version, zombies will have a grapple attack.

There are plenty more details through the link above, and videos showing the other two major pillars – shelter management and dialogue – are expected soon.

Dead State’s development team is led by Brian Mitsoda, formerly of Black Isle, Troika and Obsidian. The RPG veteran is joining inXile to assist with Torment: Tides of Numenera, too.